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Archive for February, 2007

Talking extempore on the phone so to speak may not be the best way of giving thoughtful advice or being thoughtful at all so it occurred to me that I’d better think of what I was saying a little bit more reflectively.

At this time I thought of taking up the ideas I had about lenses. Now I suppose most photographers take an interest in lenses for granted but it seems to me that there are a number of things to think about.

First of all you can have the obvious point that it’s no use having a sophisticated or well built camera with a poor lens. Whether there are any poorly built cameras around now is a question.

At the simplest level you can think of camera lens combinations such as Zenith/Jupiter or Praktica/Pancolor which in my personal experience exemplify the excellent lens with less than excellent bodies.

On a deeper level perhaps it’s clear that you can have photographs without cameras and lenses at all. Without lenses there are pinhole cameras and without cameras or lenses there are traditional methods such as photograms which involve placing physical objects on light sensitive materials or modern technologies such as ray tracing.

Today it’s swung the other way a bit perhaps. And I’ve been motivated to look further at the advice I gave concerning kit lenses supplied with DSLRs, a few alternatives and even some historical perspectives perhaps to rethink how there are differences in practice today with digital imaging.

I thought to begin this it might be worth taking a trip down memory lane. Of course a lot of photographers that I know are out there were not even born in the times that I’m thinking about and even for me it’s half a lifetime away.

Nevertheless I hope you’ll bear with me as it should throw light on lenses.

I have in front of me as I blog a Spanish edition of the Focal Guide to lenses titled Los Objetivos – Una guia para aficionados. It’s written by Leonard Gaunt published in Barcelona and the year is 1978. The photos come from a number of different photographers such as Ed Buziak, Francisco Hidalgo, Raymond Lea, Michael Barrington Martin and Michael O’Cleary.

For copyright reasons I can only give illustrations with a couple of my own photos from this book which I think indicate some of my thoughts on lenses then and now pretty well.

The first picture is a picture of a fireman rescuing a little girl and is a copy of an old book illustration.

Fireman and Child

The second picture is of a mosaic taken from the city of Trier in Germany – then West Germany – which has many fine Roman remains.

mosaic

I think it’s worth pointing out the captions:

The picture of the fireman states that this would be a fine picture for a macro lens but is in fact taken with a standard lens.

The mosaic caption has a slightly different slant: It emphasizes the quality of modern optics pointing out that the picture was taken with a relatively cheap 29mm lens.

Now, how is this relevant to photo practice – or at least my photo practice – today?

There are a couple of points I think to talk about which might make more sense as we go along.

Both of these pictures are monochrome and are in some sense of flat objects. Both of these images benefit from overall sharpness. Clearly the mosaic is not completely flat but the book illustration is.

Now I’ll tell you straight away that in order to put the picture of the fireman and the little girl on this blog I didn’t look through my archive of negatives, or even my scans of negatives. I certainly didn’t take a roll of Kodak Technical Pan and a high contrast lith style developer and shoot the image again. I simply put the book into my flatbed scanner.

I think this illustrates one of the points. When I am asked to provide an image of a bookplate, a postcard a beer mat or a bus ticket and many other objects of this kind that I used to photograph and publish with many different editorial features I would simply replace them with a scanned image.

Is this photography at all? Was it ever?

To illustrate this with some more pictures.

Hospital Life Cover

The first is my cover spread from the now defunct Hospital Life. The editor, Deanna Wilson wrote this comment: “John Rocha describes the background to the 19th-century development of the Christmas card; he also took the exquisite photographs”.

The second is a link to a modern site from the National Council for the Preservation of Plants and gardens. (click here and choose Pictures Without Cameras from the Index)

Note these are called flower pictures but I think the point remains.

How does this tie up with actually taking photographs with cameras and lenses? I’ll try to look at that in my next post perhaps combining some points about lens choice with my views on the Raw Advantage

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As I predicted, Raw Shooters Essentials has vanished from the Pixmantec site which redirects to Adobe.

I sometimes use the site at Photo-Freeware and this still has a Raw Shooters Essential download. How long for and will there be registration problems. I don’t know. Many photographers are thinking of alternatives.

For the download click here

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OK then, now talking about photography as part of a telephone conversation turns out to be trickier than I thought. First of all there should be some sort of context so I’d better say a few words about this conversation: and who the people are.
I’m speaking to my nephew the forager Fergus Drennan. If you want to find out more about what he does you can go to his website at (http://wildmanwildfood.co.uk/). I wanted to congratulate him on the response to his latest television special on BBC3, “The Roadkill Chef”. I wasn’t able to see this programme as it’s not available to me but I was sent a copy of a review by Nancy Banks-Smith of the Guardian which was fairly typical of the many positive responses. Now of course as part of his continued efforts to spread the word of foraging, Fergus has just been commissioned to write a book and this is where the problem starts because his agent, Debbie Catchpole who he refers to obliquely as the usually lovely Debbie has helped to secure his contract as an author. The problem is that this book not only needs text but photographs.

The only person available to take these photographs is Fergus himself and he’s no photographer. So what to do?
Here’s how we got on.

J. Hullo Fergus, is that you? Glad I caught you as you’re pretty elusive these days. I just wanted to have a word with you to tell you that I got a copy of the review from Nancy banks-Smith in the Guardian. So obviously your programme was a success. Congratulations.
F. Yes, it was such a success that I wasn’t able to go down to the supermarket next day. I was worried in case anybody recognised me. And indeed some people recognised me on the street. One woman told me I looked better without the stubble.
J. Well, that’s great. So things are really taking off for you. This foraging business is finally happening.
F. It seems to be but of course it’s one of those good news bad news situations.
J. OK, so what’s the good news?
F. The good news is that I’ve just been commissioned to write a book. It’s been arranged through my agent Debbie Catchpole. And the problem is that I’ve got about a year to write it which isn’t much as I’ve got to cover all the seasons – but the real problems and this is why I’m panicking and I’m hoping to get some advice from you is that I’ve got to take the photographs because of course no-one else can be with me all the time.
J. Well, that’s a bit of a challenge isn’t it? I mean, I know that you’ve taken a few photographs over the years but obviously nothing serious. So what are you thinking of doing?
F. Oh, that’s what I was going to ask you.
J. Given the fact that these pictures are going to be printed in a book you really need to find out some of that facts concerning the final output, what use they’re going to be put to and how big they’re going to be. I expect your publisher could help you there.
F. Yes, I’ve actually spoken to them. It’s likely to be an A5 book and in certain cases they say the pictures might be printed right across and bled to the edges.
J. So some of the pictures could be quite big. You’ll need some good quality.
F. That’s right. I had a talk with one of the photographers there and he was helpful so I thought I’d talk to you and check it out to see if you agreed.
J.What did he say?
F. He said I ought to go straight into digital and not bother with film and probably my best bet was to buy one of the new 10 megapixel digital single lens reflexes.
J. That sounds like pretty good advice. Anything else?
F. He told me that he was a Nikon user and that there was Nikon D80 just out. He also suggested that the Canon 400 might be suitable.
J.He’s picked the two leading brands for you to think about. Yes, you could well make a choice there.
F. What do you think?
J. First you need to understand that I’m a Canon user so I’ll have a slight bias. It isn’t because I think any camera is better than the other and I’ll tell you some more about that later. One of the problems is that once you’ve invested in lenses and other gizmos for one system it’s hard to change. New cameras keep on coming and going. So you have to have some confidence in the brand. I’ll try to tell you what I can. I don’t actually know the Nikon camera. My information is that it’s very well made and that the standard kit lens supplied with it is of quite good quality. My own experience is that the Canon – I have the D350 which is the previous model but is fairly similar is not quite as strongly built and the kit lens supplied is not really very good in my opinion.
F. So what should I do then? Are there any more features?
J. There is one thing that I personally find a problem with my Canon. I do get a lot of sensor dust. This is because every time you change the lens dirt gets into the film compartment and falls over the sensor. Now certain companies like Olympus pioneered sensor cleaning systems and the Canon 400 now has a fully automatic cleaning system with, I believe, some help from the software if necessary. I believe that might be quite a consideration. It’s also a little cheaper. One other small point is that if we ever get together when I come over sometimes you could try out some of the lenses and things that I have from Canon. But it’s up to you. I’d go around and see what’s the best deal you can get. Did he have anything else to say then?
F. He told me that I’d be shooting pictures and started talking about RAW files and jpegs and things like this I didn’t understand. He told me that if he were doing it he’d stick to jpegs. Does this mean anything to you?
J. Yes it does and I’m going to tell you that I tend to disagree with him. One thing to bear in mind is that of the cameras that you’re considering with the Canon I don’t know about the Nikon you can shoot can shoot a RAW file and a jpeg at the same time. So you don’t have to make the choice initially though you would run into problems needing more memory and storage and so on. Still, I’ll tell you that in my opinion the RAW file is the way to go if you have the time and you’re willing to acquire the skill. Both cameras will process a jpeg file and produce a good quality photograph but there’s little you can do if you want to change it or modify it or optimise it because it’s all been done for you by the camera. If I were you I’d strongly consider using the RAW file.
F. Can you give me any help with that?
J. Yes. You’ll get some software with Canon and you can also get some free alternative programmes. I recommend Raw Shooter Essentials. You can download it from (http://www.pixmantec.com/products/rawshooter_essentials.asp) but hurry because Adobe have bought the company and I don’t think a free version will be available for long. I personally find this programme more user friendly than the official Canon product.
F. You said something about memory and storage.
J. Yes. You’ll have to buy some memory cards. Personally I’d would suggest another kind of storage system as well. You can buy small, portable hard drives with 40 or 80 Gigabytes of storage where you can download the pictures on your memory cards and this works out much cheaper in the end. So that should give you something to think about.
F. Yes. If I go and buy the equipment can you give me some more help and advice?
J. Certainly. There’s one thing you could do. When you’ve taken some RAW pictures you could send some to me and I’ll have a look at them, see what they’re like and how you’re doing on that. If necessary I can optimise them myself for you to get you started.
F. How can I send them? These files are quite big.
J. I suggest you get yourself an email account with plenty of storage. I’m thinking of gmail or perhaps the new Lycos account and of course you can also try an online storage system. The one I prefer is produced by (www.diino.com). Diino, that’s d i i n o is a Swedish company. And they have a very good free service which is reliable and you could put some files up on there, tell me how to access them and then I’d be able to help you. Is that it for the moment?
F. Yes. I’m actually quite frightened. That’s quite a lot. I’ll go out and get one of these cameras. I think from what you say I’ll probably go for the Canon and then I can get back to you. There’s just one more thing before I forget. you said that the kit lens was not very good. Any ideas on that?
J. Well there’s quite a lot you can do about it. You can buy another lens instead but many lenses are very, very expensive when they’re good. And this can be a bit of a problem. I think It’s fair to say that I’m one of those photographers who think that lenses are more important than cameras. It’s no use having a camera however sophisticated and however well-built if the lens is no good.
F. That sounds bad.
J. Given the kind of photography you’re likely to do which is not high speed action photography for example, I would suggest that you might consider the standard 50mm 1.8 lens. If you take the Canon for example, it’s plasticky, lightweight and cheap but it has a very high optical quality and perhaps used with one or two close up lenses it might do for you.
F. Right
J. So, see how it goes and tell me what you think later.
F. OK
J. Once again it’s great news about your book and congratulations on your television programme – bye for now
F. Bye

Was my advice sound? I like to think so but it set me thinking about how to take the step into high quality digital photography and what I would call the RAW advantage.

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